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GM Eric Hansen plays in 2018 February Knights

It’s rare for a Grandmaster to play in St. John’s or Newfoundland. GM Mark Bluvshtein played a Canadian Chess Challenge as an IM near Memorial University around 2002. And in 2013, GM Aman Hambleton (former NL resident, then an IM), participated in and won the NL Open. Big congrats to Aman on recently achieving his GM title!

Much earlier, GM Bent Larsen, GM Pal Benko, and GM Walter Browne played a Canadian Open held in St. John’s in 1970 (48 years ago!). I was able to find a detailed article on the event written by Vojin Vujosevic, who participated in the tournament. Check it out

It was a real treat that GM Eric Hansen was able to come play our weekend swiss event (February 16-18). He’s still just 25 years old and his chess resume, to name just a few items I’m aware of, includes:

two-time winner of the Canadian Open

currently rated 2629 FIDE (a personal best)

challenger to world champion Magnus Carlsen in lengthy online blitz and bullet matches

live commentator for prestigious events in Saint Louis and the recent 2018 Tata Steel masters tournament in Wijk an Zee

creator of Chessbrah channels and business. The original chessbrah

The chessbrahs are very popular chess streamers on Twitch and YouTube. They often play bullet (1-minute), time odds games, and blindfold games at a ridiculously high level – often while listening to dance/techno music. They also provide commentary for many popular high level chess tournaments such as the Candidates. Eric, Aman Hambleton, Robin Van Kampen, and other chessbrah members have done a lot to promote chess in Canada and their fanbase extends beyond that as well. http://www.twitch.tv/chessbrah

Part of Eric’s motivation for coming to Newfoundland was to fulfill rated game requirements to play the chess Olympiad later this year in Georgia. He also wanted to visit the province since he hadn’t been here before. It was really awesome of him to give his time to play this event, and to hang out and chat.

We had a number of talented new players come out to play, including Xingbo Huang, Brandon Fudge, Nithum Thain, and Curtis Mullaly. Multi-time NL Open champion Anthony Leonard also participated after a bit of a layoff, which was great to see. There was a lot of excitement in the air, for sure. Big thanks to Mohammad Kowsari for reserving the MUN Engineering Lounge for the event.

February Knights – Round 2. Photo by: Michael Pickard

The 5-round, 3-day tournament kept everyone pretty busy, but we were still able to bring Eric to O’Reilly’s on George Street in downtown St. John’s for some traditional music and drinks, and to see some local people. A group of us also had dinner and chatted with Eric at a restaurant/brewery called Yellowbelly on Sunday evening. It is really impressive that he has higher ambitions with his chess and with his Chessbrah business, which continues to grow rapidly.

Eric also encouraged us all to come out for dinner and blitz after round 3 on Saturday. He dominated the games from what I could tell, but it was a blast.

Fun blitz after Round 3. Credit: Michael Pickard

At the tournament itself, which was played at 60 minutes per player with 30 second increments, Eric won with a score of 5/5 against Ryan Pickard, Nihad Dervisevic, Anthony Leonard, Jordan Berson, and Steve Martin. He was never really in trouble in any of the games! Congratulations! As mentioned previously, some new players had some very nice performances. Xingbo made draws with Anthony and Mohammad, Brandon won against 2017 NL Open co-champ Jiaying and he drew against Anthony, Curtis drew against Steve, and Nithum gave Nihad a really hard fight in a losing effort. Full standings here.

Here are two of Eric’s games against Jordan and Steve (Jordan, Mohammad, and I shared second place):